What is Caelus?

Caelus is the next evolution in open-source computational continuum mechanics solutions. Caelus is a derivative of OpenFOAM® but has been restructured to create a stronger foundation on which to build your open-source CFD solutions.

CML stands for Computational Mechanics Library, as Caelus contains a suite of numerical tools suitable for building, for example but not limited to, fluid, thermo, structural and electro-magnetic solvers. Several fluid dynamics solvers are provided.

Being a derivative of OpenFOAM®, it is released under the GPL. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Why was Caelus created?

For the past decade, OpenFOAM® has been a pioneer in the field of open-source computational mechanics. However, broader acceptance of it has been hampered by difficulties using on it platforms other than a select few Linux distributions, dependencies on a large number of external applications that are difficult to support, and a growth in library size due to legacy code.

Caelus was formed to specifically address these issues. The main highlights of how Caelus is different:

Easy installation with GUI installer for all platforms that can also be run in text mode

Removal of legacy code, unvalidated models and general library clean up

Only two external dependencies (Python and MPI)

Solvers and models validated against published data

Documentation

When (or how often) will Caelus be updated?

Caelus will not just be a one-time, release-and-forget. The first seven versions were released every 6 months and annually subsequently.The release numbers reflect the year and month of the release. The first release was 4.10 for ’14 October. The second release was 5.04 (’15 April) and so on. The ‘1’ was dropped for simplicity. There will also be bug fixes released in between major releases but won’t include features to maintain inter-release stability. As development of features for new releases take shape, those which will make the cut will be publicized.

How do I use Caelus?

In similar manner as you would OpenFOAM® but much easier to set up and accessible on more platforms. Check out the Caelus documentation for more details.

Where do I contribute?

Being open-source, Caelus is meant to be a collaborative project. There is a publicly available source repository for the current Caelus release:

Instructions for downloading and setting up the Caelus Contributors source code are provided in the included README. Please contact us if you encounter bugs, need help contributing, or have general feedback.